How to answer a how / in what ways question
The word 'ways' is the giveaway. The question is about method: the techniques and choices a composer uses to create the effect or meaning it names. It is asking for craft, so retelling what happens is the one thing that will not answer it.
New here first? Start with breaking down the whole question, then come back for this.
Each paragraph is a method
Organise your essay around the composer's methods, so each paragraph shows one way the meaning is made.
- 1
Organise by technique, not event
Build each paragraph on a way the composer works, rather than a moment in the plot.
- 2
Lead with the method
Name the choice first, then show what it makes the responder think or feel.
- 3
Avoid retelling
If you are narrating what happens, you have answered 'what', not 'how'.
The shape of the paragraph
The paragraph names a method, shows it at work, analyses the meaning it builds, then links it to the larger idea.
Topic sentence (the method)
Open by naming the technique or structural choice this paragraph is about.
Watch out:Lead with the method, not the event. 'Miller uses personification to...' beats 'When Proctor says...'.
Evidence of the method
Show the method at work in a specific quote.
Watch out:Choose evidence that clearly displays the technique you named.
Analysis (the meaning it builds)
Show how the method creates the meaning the question is about.
Watch out:Keep the focus on how the technique works, rather than what happens next.
Return line
Link this way of working back to the larger idea it serves.
Watch out:Tie the method to the question's concept, so it reads as an answer to 'how'.
A model paragraph, labelled sentence by sentence
Here is the structure at work. Read the paragraph straight through first: it should sound like one continuous argument, not a checklist. Then read the label beside each sentence to see the job it is doing. It is written to support this thesis:
The thesis
Miller represents the collapse of reason chiefly through language: as the play descends into hysteria, he lets figurative excess and absolute declarations take over the stage where argument once stood.
The paragraph, read straight through
One of Miller's central methods for representing the collapse of reason is to hand the play's language over to personification, so that abstractions seem to act where people no longer think. Proctor's warning that “vengeance is walking Salem” gives spite a body and a stride, and by letting vengeance move like a person, Miller shows a town no longer governed by reasoning individuals but by a loosed emotion with a life of its own. The technique itself enacts the theme, since as reason fails, plain statement gives way to figures that make the irrational feel real. In this way, the manner of Miller's language becomes his argument about how easily reason gives way to feeling.
One of Miller's central methods for representing the collapse of reason is to hand the play's language over to personification, so that abstractions seem to act where people no longer think.
Proctor's warning that “vengeance is walking Salem” gives spite a body and a stride,
and by letting vengeance move like a person, Miller shows a town no longer governed by reasoning individuals but by a loosed emotion with a life of its own.
The technique itself enacts the theme, since as reason fails, plain statement gives way to figures that make the irrational feel real.
In this way, the manner of Miller's language becomes his argument about how easily reason gives way to feeling.
Every quotation above is verbatim from The Crucible (Arthur Miller) and verified against the source text.
See it done on your own paragraph
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Back to all the key words, or learn the techniques that give you something to write about.
The structure, teaching and model paragraph are our own, aligned to the 2017 English Advanced syllabus (2019–2026 prescriptions).